Word: authorization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...author worked last summer as an intern in the Westinghouse Power Systems Company's Market Research and Analysis group...
...Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) was one of the cultural happenings of the past decade. The novel received largely rhapsodic reviews; its fictional use of such historical figures as Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan prompted reams of analysis. Commercial success accompanied the critical welcome. Paperback rights went for $1.9 million, a record at the time, a film deal was struck, and Ragtime became a bestseller. As the cash register continued to jingle, though, a number of literati began backing and filling from their earlier praise. If Doctorow is that good...
That is too bad, because the author's new novel demands some patience and cooperation from readers before its effects begin to take hold and grip. Gone is the spare, metronomic prose that made the inventive plot of Ragtime so accessible and entertaining. The written surface of Loon Lake is ruffled and choppy. Swatches of poetry are jumbled together with passages of computerese and snippets of mysteriously disembodied conversation. Narration switches suddenly from first to third person, or vice versa, and it is not always clear just who is telling what. Chronology is so scrambled that the aftereffects...
Doctorow may try to do too much in Loon Lake. When the poet Penfield reminisces about his experiences in Japan, for instance, he seems to belong in a different novel. But the author's skill at historical reconstruction, so evident in Ragtime, remains impressive here; the novel's fragments and edgy, nervous rhythms call up an age of clashing anxiety. Loon Lake tantalizes long after it is ended. As Penfield writes about the bird that gives its name to the Bennett estate, "The cry of loons once heard is not forgotten...
DIED. Harold Edgar Clurman, 78, ebullient, versatile catalyst of the American theater, who attained eminence as a director (Member of the Wedding, The Waltz of the Toreadors), producer, author, teacher and raconteur; of cancer; in New York City. After starting out as an actor, he founded the Group Theater in 1931 to serve as an alternative to Broadway's commercial offerings; for ten years it provided a forum for playwrights like Clifford Odets and William Saroyan, introduced to the American stage the Stanislavsky Method of acting, and nourished such actors as Lee Strasberg, John Garfield, Cheryl Crawford...